Feb
16

Accused of Ignorance

I honestly don’t mind being called ignorant, in fact I love it when someone does it because 9/10 times they have no clue what they are talking about so it makes it ironic and amusing. There are plenty of things I am clueless about, but I love to learn when the opportunity presents itself. I sometimes forget about posts that caused “controversy” but a nice comment today reminded me of one of my favorites.

Look people…You need to get a life! If you don’t like the exhibit then don’t go, problem solved! Stop trying to get people to boycott or shut down the exhibit just because you don’t approve. That is completely ignorant! So to all of you out there that think this is in humane Grow Up and get over yourselves.
-Samantha

As one of the people posted, our boycott was not successful. The company is alive and traveling the country. It makes me sad that some people can put aside the fact that some of those bodies were not donated to science, but someone is commercializing what can be described as organ trafficking. Yeap, stolen bodies! that is what you are going to go “learn” from.

So to reply to my latest poster Samantha!

First, lets see… I need to get a life. Dam it Samantha! you got me, I have no life! I play video games so I am constantly told that I need to get one. Where can I buy a life? Please help me Samantha. I long for a life. The fact that I have a job and a twitter account does not count for a life. I guess maybe I will be lucky enough to some day have Samantha come back and tell me how I get a life. At least she did not call me a loser.

Second, I did not go Samantha… and neither did most of my lazy blogger friends (thanks Burro) because we took a moral stance against something most of us found disgusting and just plain evil to profit from someone’s remains which are sacred to a lot of people. Even if I was atheist, which Tim Teabow might accomplish, I still would not be ok with someone’s remains being displayed like this against their will. So Samantha, I had already solved my one problem.

Third! the definition of a boycott

“A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons. It can be a form of consumer activism.”

so sorry, but as much as you are within your right to go see prisoners plastiniced, I am in my right to try to spread the message that people should not. I find it deplorable that so many people hide behind the whole “science” and something that was just available to the “few” before can now be seen by ALL! OMG now I can be just like that celebrity scientist!

There are WAY better educational routes, and even the 1% of me that thinks that Burro made a great point saying that some kid might be inspired by seeing this is quickly overruled by the reality of how the bodies were obtained.

FOURTH! and the most important part of this whole thing… how is me wanting to boycott something that I don’t believing ignorant? I guess my inferior intellect is keeping me from understanding the magnitude that Bodies Revealed has as an intellectual tool… screw the iPad, screw google, screw computers and 3D models, screw MEDICINE… bodies revealed is all I need not be ignorant! group rates available.

Cinco! “in humane” is right, IN went the polymer into the dudes from that Chinese prison.

So Samantha, I am not against science or the study of the human body. I personally find some of this grotesque even though have seen and held human tissue in my hands for educational purposes. Ok that sounded like I was self sex educating myself, but no, what I was trying to say is that I have handled the organs of a dead body. Oh wait that sounds even worse. Ok, lets try again. I did take a physiology “honors-woot” class which included seeing a dissected human body and handling some of the preserved organs. Those bodies were donated to science and were a great educational tool. Now if those people would have been ok with being put through plastination, AWESOME… but I still find deplorable that a company uses Chinese prisoners bodies to make money in the name of science.

In conclusion, no I am not going to get over myself! I am still in love with myself and want to stay that way. I am not breaking up with myself just for you Samantha! so please quite patronizing me and tell all your friends to come read this! better yet, post it on facebook and tell them how mean I am. The more people that learn where those bodies come from the better.

Sep
21

Famibook!

I managed to live online all by myself (or so I though) for many, many years. My interwebs were a world far, far way from the eyes of only but a select few millions that made up the blogsphere and I thought it would stay that way forever. Everyone knows the joke some of us have been in for a long time now, “OMG MY MOM GOT E-MAIL NOW, How long until she tells me Bill Gates is going to make me rich if I forward this e-mail?”

Enter facebook, it made “social networking” accessible to many. Twitter can also be blamed, but it seems like my family has gravitated to facebook more than twitter. Now all of a sudden it seems everyone is online and posting about their lives out there… what’s worse, they can read about my online world now.

I doubt any of them will go back and read through my archive, and this has never been mi diary but there is a sense of exposure for sure. I am not going to change the way I write at all, or modify or delete a post to make someone happy… its my blog and reading it is a choice. I think the Facebook Spying is over because darn it, I am not beyond unfriending a family member on facebook if I smell drama.

There are other questions though. Through my family other extended family has found me and I have had a real hard time accepting them as friends. I have rule that I don’t add people there if I don’t care what they have to say because well, 300 people are just way, way too many. I was even called about accepting one of them… its like wow, how did my facebook all of a sudden become my famibook.

I find it very interesting already when people that barely know me not just want to friend me, but they go the step further of “friending” my friends. I have never used the interwebs to make friends, my blog, online forum postings, etc, always served another purpose… the added side-effect was that I did end up making some great friends.

I love when Spyder retells some of the joke her Mom tells her, and I thought about that when my Mom calls me to talk about the internet. She had just finished watching a show on Spanish TV about the “DANGERS!!!” of the internet, and how people have encountered horrible faiths after meeting people online. It was an amusing conversation to me, but she seemed almost nervous like, according to this program you are an statistical anomaly because you should have already met some psycho that would kill you.

My best friends has also had some interesting family interactions with facebook but he would have to post those on his own some day. I would love to hear if facebook is somewhat merging your online world with your real life one. I think its an interesting topic and cannot wait for the day when XO happens to leave me a message on my facebook and my religious family sounds the alarm and stages an intervention to save me from “the atheist white devil.”

Aug
27

Hard On

Even though some of my female readers would probably dissagree, I think males deal with hormones just as much as you do and not just during “that” time of the month. We are constantly charged with heavy doses of testosterone which makes us be prone to animalistic instincts like getting excited by the violence in the UFC or admire boobage wherever it presents itself.

Males spend most of their teenager years trying to learn how to handle erections. Its probably one of the toughest parts of going through puberty to have to deal with erections that we cannot either control nor take care of. This lead to one of the more weird instances of impromptu “sexual education” in my young life.

We were in Spanish class and the teacher was going on about his lecture. We were a particularly misbehaved group that was not only mean to each other, but also to the teachers. We got in our share of trouble and a lof of highschool was about who could do more mischief at one time or another. As the teacher continued with his lesson which sadly I cannot remember, one of my classmates yelled “Gonzalo (the teacher)” has a hardon.

Laughter ensued and even though all of us could relate since it was an all male school, the teacher was really disturbed by the acussation. His face changed and now that I remember the incident as an adult I can imagine how mortified he was. Back then I did not know the difference between a “shower” and a “grower.” Gonzalo got visually more upset and redder as the seconds continue to pass. Then he repeated the accusation trying to probably look for a reaction from the culprit but we had our “no snittching” rule in place for quite some time by then.

Then he went on a long tirade about how the penis multipies in size during an erection and seemed even close to just losing it during it. He looked so upset that we stopped laughin altogether and just listened about how if he had a hardon we would have “really” noticed it. He eventually cooled off and continued the lecture but it was an intersting reaction by an adult losing its cool over an obvious erroneous claim of “hard on.”

As adults we learn how to control erections and don’t walk around with a full flag pole salute unless we are about to perform; but during those teenage gears where if the wind hits just the right way we sported one it was a lot harder (lol pun) to conceal. Heavy books seemed to always be a good cover, but it was rather embarrasing when it was not Gonzalo that got called out for a “chubby” (not sure why but that word when referring to an erection still makes me giggle) but one of us. I certainly would not want to deal with aunt “flo” coming to visit every month, but uncontrolled erections were no fun to deal when during those years.

Apr
23

Long Meetings

I used to dislike meetings. Even though they are a necessary evil in most work environments, if they are not propely structured or have an agenda they can take forever and not accomplish much. I say I used to dislike them because now my distaste for them has grown closer to full on hatred.

If you have never been on a conference call that lasted more than 8 hours you do not understand my pain. Yeap, if something goes wrong and you have people all over God’s green earth that need to work together to find a cause and resolve it, you end up with a bunch of people stuck on a phone call that seems to last for days. Thank God for the mute button.

The good thing about it is that if you are not the one that has to talk much and give reports on progress; when you are in a company of thousands and your usershare is only in the hundreds you ar small potatoes, you get to sit back and listen to other people sweat. I could smell the fear of not knowing exactly what was going on with some of the voices an late the excitment when everyone seemed to turn into monkeys flinging poo at each other.

I laugh a lot during this little exercises on human communication. From the guy that goes on a 2 minute talk only to realize he had a bad connection and everyone is trying to make him call back from the people that confuse mute with hold. Putting hundreds of people on mute is one thing, but putting them on hold so they have to continue the call almost shouting because classical elevato music is playing in the background is down right hilarious.

I have heard kids, dogs, birds and even club music in the background while people try to support a multinational company and still have a life. Not that I am totally innoncent and did not have to be quick to mute button when my cat Maia thinks I am talking to her and she decides to talk back. Time differences are also a source of amusment specially when you are handing off an issue. Someone is just started their day while the other cannot wait t get some sleep. I thought I knew everything there was to know about meetings, but I have been learning quite a bit more lately. It sucks to be this busy sometimes, but if you are, might as well laugh while hearing a guy probably sell mangoes in some street in bangalore.

Feb
19

Facebook Spying

Yeap, it has happened. It took a social network for my online life to spill over into my “real” life. This time it was no big deal, funny actually. Bea updated her facebook status half bragging to all of our compatriots living in the U.S. because we were about to enjoy some empanadas, oh delicious Colombian empandas to celebrate my birthday and the SuperBowl ™. Sure enough one of our cousins (later when I inquired about about who the “sapo”* was, the finger pointing began so right now there are a couple of “sapos”) had revealed that we were having empanadas… and did not invite the rest of the extended family.

* In Colombia, not sure if other Spanish speaking countries, a snitch is called a “sapo” = Frog because they are said to have a long tongue.

I love my family, but we have LOTS of it. I think at last count (we recently had an addition to the family.) we are happily sitting at over 30. Empanadas are delicious but take forever to make… there is a long preparation process before they are even deep fried. So my poor Mom who was already having shoulder pain (which I did not know about), my sister and Bea worked all afternoon just to feed our immediate family… still a sizable 10 people party. You figure 4 empanadas per still 40 freaking empanadas.

My Mom is the ultimate people-pleaser and she loves to keep the family in peace. I beg to differ, lol and rock the boat once in a while… at times even becoming the black sheep for periods of time. She wanted to keep the whole thing quiet because we, all 30some of us, celebrate ever birthday together. Even though I have not been in Chicago for our my birthday in quite some time. We were not trying to alienate anyone or cause drama… but we got caught, thanks to facebook. So when one of my aunts called my Mom to inquire about the festivities, my Mom tried to dance around the issue to simply be called out thanks to… A FACEBOOK STATUS PAGE! LOL

I watch it now, and hold back my sexual innuendos on facebook too… because you never know who is reading and might not be accustomed to our college level language back and forth banter. Heck if anyone heard Travis and I going back and forth they would think he is the biggest twink in world, and I his daddy bear.

So… be careful about “friending” not just your boss, but always keep in mind that Mom might also get to read your facebook.

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